While wandering around Notre Dame, this sculpture with the bright stained glass behind it grabbed my attention. It was in a small side chapel that most people don’t see because they’re looking up and in instead on down and out. Plus, I love that a single pane was open to show how the windows work.

It’s November already! This month, the ArtSmart Roundtable is focusing on color. I’m that nerd that loves looking through paint chips. Pinterest photos of interior design with bold accents colors always grab my eye. My closet is organized in rainbow order. Needless to say, I like pops of color.

While I tossed around a few contemporary ideas (like Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko’s color fields or Yves Klein’s signature blue), the ability to get Creative Commons or Wikimedia Commons images ultimately steered me back towards a theme that I can tie into travel. Since I focused on medieval art in my major, medieval art it is again. Ever wonder what colors were available to medieval artists? Or where certain colors came from? Well, read on.

An angel locking the gates of Hell with a key, miniature from the Winchester Psalter, British Library, London. Circa 1121-1161. Via Wikimedia Commons

Illuminated manuscripts were made of vellum, parchment, and later paper pages. Vellum is basically the very best quality parchment (parchment being animal skin). From there, copiers and illustrators would copy the text and draw out carpet pages, full page illustrations, and marginalia. The text was always done first (so any mistakes could be easily shaved off and written again), then the illustrators would draw on the patterns. The gilding was always done last as a finishing touch to avoid wasting gold.

Book of hours, Paris c. 1410. Miniature of the Annunciation, with the start of Matins in the Little Office, the beginning of the texts after the calendar in the usual arrangement. Via Wikimedia Commons.

In addition to gold and silver leaf, medieval manuscripts had these basic colors: black, white, red, blue, green, and yellow. All the colors either came from plant/animal sources or from minerals. Here’s the breakdown of the major sources:

Plant/Animal Based:

carmine/cochineal

crimson/kermes

lac

weld

tumeric

saffron

China green

woad

indigo

turnsole

carbon

sepia

Mineral Based:

red lead*

vermillion*

rust

ochre

orpiment*

verdigris*

malachite

ultramarine

white lead*

chalk

iron gall ink

*denotes toxicity

With this 6 color palette, just imagine the time and energy it took just to get the pigments in order to copy, illustrate, and illuminate a manuscript. There’s a reason why only the elite had illuminated books. The money needed for the colors and parchment alone would have been the medieval version of a diamond encrusted 24k gold iPhone.

So where did they source these dyes? Here’s a map marking where major supplies of a particular insect/plant/animal/mineral would have been found. Ultramarine, orpiment, and verdigris were prized for their bright colors, but ultramarine was the priciest pigment you could possibly buy since it only came from Afghanistan. Tumeric, lac, and indigo had to travel from India to get into the hands of medieval artists. Others were closer to European scriptoria, but they still had to travel across kingdoms and fiefdoms to get there.

Red lead was a by-product of making white lead so you got a two-for-one producing those colors. Other colors were trickier. Turnsole tended to fade, indigo was more purple-y blue, ochre could be hit or miss on the shade of yellow, and vermillion required grinding it as finely as possible to get a rich red rather than a blackish color.

Now, all these colors were mixed with various chemicals to stabilize them or with binders in order to apply them. Often, they were poisonous to the illustrator. Add in the fact that they were doing their work by natural and/or candlelight with fine brushes, rock crystal magnifiers, and possibly utilizing the “magic-eye eye” (the way you have to look at a magic-eye image to see the 3D object) to do the very detailed parts, and I’m beyond impressed that certain manuscripts such as the Book of Kells HAVE NO MISTAKES IN THE ILLUSTRATIONS. None.

Only after all the illustration work was done, the illuminators had the difficult task of applying gold and silver leaf to the images without getting it stuck to the page (gold leaf is almost as bad as glitter for sticking to everything) or ruining the image when burnishing the leaf. Pretty nifty, huh?

What is ArtSmart? A couple fellow travel bloggers with an interest in art and I decided to do a roundtable series focused on making our readers “art smart”, e.g. understanding why certain works of art are famous and worth the visit while traveling. At the end of this post are links to the other ArtSmart posts by participating bloggers. Interested in joining the Roundtable? Check out our Facebook page or email me.

This garden was walled off, but you could catch a peek through the gate (or climb up on the stoop along the wall). It was near an embassy, but I couldn’t tell if this was a private residence or another embassy-like place (they had an unrecognizable flag on a pole in the yard). I just loved the sculpture spitting water into the pond.

Most of my time in Dublin for TBEX was spent inside because of all the rain. My last day there cleared up, so I was able to take some outdoor shots of the area along the canal (Ballsbridge area).

When I studied at UCD, I would often ride the bus through Ballsbridge on my way from city center through Donnybrook out to UCD’s campus. So it was nice to revisit the neighborhood and poke around streets and shops I never wandered around 9 years ago.

A statue along the canal.

The back of the Pepper Canister Church. Yes, that sign is in Irish about the vote to abolish the Seanad.

I was amused at the packaging for cherry tomatoes at Donnybrook Fair, a fancy grocery store with prepared foods as well. Also, drooling over the parsnips.

The Georgian doors across from the TBEX hotel.

Of course, I did take a few photos from the TBEX opening party at the Guinness Storehouse. True story, it was just my second visit to the Storehouse despite 7 or 8 trips to Ireland.

Guinness bottle collection in the lobby of the Storehouse.

Samples of corned beef boxty (a crepe made from potato though these were like gnocchi).

If the weather had been better, I would have taken so many more photos. It was just raining too hard to risk ruining my phone. But at least I captured some shots that aren’t your usual Dublin photos like pub signs, Molly Malone, Ha’Penny Bridge, the Liffey, or that Knobs & Knockers shop near Trinity.

About Erin

I'm an art nerd, food dork, travel geek, and lover of Guinness. When I travel, I seek out great museums and amazing food. The architecture, art, and food of a city speak to me. When not traveling, I highlight the art and food found in the Boston area. ...more